Trust the experts to be wrong

The Real Estate and Mortgage Show

Trust the experts to be wrong

Hey, so yesterday I tuned into TikTok, obviously to upload my video and I came across a lady that's actually a real estate agent in the Toronto Real Estate Board.

She was pontificating about how she was tipped off about how agents who think they, just because they have a social media platform, they have the right to say whatever they want.

She was actually quite vulgar about it. And what was really interesting was she was actually exercising the very thing that all these other agents do, you know, using her freedom to say whatever she wanted on our social media, okay?

I think agents should do that. I didn't like the fact that she just wanted to generalize and make herself look better by putting down every other real estate agent.

I can tell you, you know, yeah, there's no question there's some bad people in the business, but I will say, for the most part, agents are pretty good people.

That's been my experience over 35 years in the business. Agents are pretty hard-working and they're pretty dedicated to their craft.

Yes, there are some that are crazy, no question about it, but for the most part, you can count on a real estate agent being a pretty good person.

Okay? Now here's the thing. One of the things she was going on about was she didn't like that agents were making, um, economic, predictions or giving advice. And, you know, why not? I mean, agents have boots on the ground. They know what's going on. They know what's going on at the offer table. T

hey know what kind of activity they're, they're experiencing in the, in the marketplace.

You know, in 2020, I don't know if you guys remember it or not, but Tiff Maclan basically told everybody that interest rates aren't going anywhere. So if you're making a big purchase, a house or an investment, you can be assured that interest rates aren't going anywhere wrong.

Okay, Scotia Bank, at the end of last year, I believe they predicted somewhere around a 2% lift in the marketplace, or almost double that. Okay?

These are experts now, the boots on the ground. Yeah, we didn't have a clue what was going on either, okay? But neither did they, they got all the education, these experts, you know, they go to U of T or Queens University or London, but Western University, that's fine. I, I have nothing against that type of education, but it doesn't make him an expert. I'll tell you, when I was first in the real first got in the real estate business in 19 87, 19 90, I met a gentleman by the main, by the name of Tom Wright. Now 1990 was a shit market, okay?

Now, Tom was very attuned to what was going on in the marketplace. And, you know, he read the Financial Post, he read the Globe Mail, he did all that and I asked him, What should I be reading in order to be astute about the marketplace as you are? Tom? And Tom said, Listen, Walter, don't worry about reading about any of that stuff. Talk to the guys on the shop floor, okay? They're the guys that know what's going on. They know when the plant is busy. They know when it's slow. They can feel the hum in the air in

Terms of what's going on in the marketplace. So before you, you know, give this whole deification to economists, they're not as great as people think, Okay, talk to the boots on the ground. They know what's going on. I would take that over any economist any day.